The Tokyo Skytree, the Japanese capital’s newest tourist attraction, and now the world’s tallest free-standing tower at 634 meters high, celebrated its first month of being open to the public on Friday. As a sign of its huge success, the tower’s operators, Tobu Tower Skytree Co., revealed that in the Skytree’s opening month, just over 5.8 million people had visited. While that counts the total number of people who came to the tower’s new commercial complex, a still impressive number of 400,000 people have gone up to the observation decks since its May 22nd opening.
With the original expectation of roughly 130,000 visitors per day on weekdays, and 200,000 per day on weekends and holidays both being shattered, Tobu still only admits the Skytree is off to a “promising start.” Saemi Eto, a 63 year old Tokyo resident who volunteers in the tower’s surrounding commercial shopping area, known as Skytree Town, hopes that people from other parts of Japan, as well as other countries, will come and enjoy the traditional shitamachi (old town area). Because the demand to visit the tower remains so high, the operator is only allowing those who have purchased tickets in advance to go up to the observation decks until July 10th.
From July 11th, ticket will be sold on site to visitors, as well as in advance online. A total of 12,000 tickets will be sold per day, either in person or in the internet, and both will be on a first-come-first-served basis. Unfortunately, the standard ticket purchase only lets visitors up the first observation deck, at 350 meters high. An additional purchase is required to go up to the second deck at 450 meters.